Hello, fellow betta fish lovers :) Some of you may recall a while back, a few posts I made regarding the Penn Plax Spongebob pineapple house decoration. It contained metal in the internal frame of the green leaf part on the top. Mine happened to be defective, and the metal was exposed and rusted in my fish tank. Not only did I post a thread warning about this decoration, but I also started a petition against Penn Plax which many of you signed.

They sent me this response back in February regarding my petition:

Quote:

We are always happy to hear from fellow fish lovers as yourself, and we appreciate your concern over our products and their safety with your pet Betta. Please be assured that all of our products must meet strict testing guidelines and are tested in our research lab before they ever hit the market. There are so many factors that can lead to health issues for fish such as water quality, feeding, temps, filtration, etc…as we are sure you are fully aware of.
We appreciate the fact that you obviously care about your Betta’s health and that you even took the time to start an online petition to make a change. So many people mistreat their pets and we unfortunately hear of animal cruelty stories on a daily basis.
While we have tested this product extensively with no ill effects on our fish, we want you to know that we actually did make a change with our manufacturing plant recently. The SpongeBob resins will no longer include any metal of any type on a go forward basis.
Thank you again for your support and concern. It is people like you who really care about their pets that are part of the reason we are in this business.

Best regards,

Penn-Plax

Now, I have PROOF that they did, in fact, change this decoration so that it no longer contains metal. I've been going in to walmart and looking at this decoration every time I pass the fish section, and today, I noticed this:

If you don't know what it is, it's a picture of the inside of the pineapple house decoration. The small slit in the top is the inside of the green part of the house, which is now HOLLOW, which means it doesn't have a metal frame.

I AM SUPER EXCITED!!!!

For those of you who do own this decoration: I highly recommend that you replace it with a new one if the green leafy part on the top of yours is NOT hollow. Even if the metal is not directly exposed and is inside the decoration, the decoration is still porous.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to those of you who signed my petition back in February!

I honestly, don't know. I have the squid ward house in my VTs tank still. He LOVES his squidward house so I didn't have the heart to take it out :( it's the only decoration he uses and he uses it often. It's always been hollow... I'm fairly certain that it was never made with metal and the metal in the sponge bob house was only in the green leafy part on top. There were little wires in each of the spikes and obviously there aren't anymore since its hollow.

He also never used the spongebob pineapple house when it was in his tank and he doesn't use the terracotta pot I replaced it with. He had the squidward house forever. When I first got him, he had a one gallon tank and the only decoration that fit in it was the squidward house. Since he's literally had it forever, that's probably why he only uses it.

A year and a half he's had the squidward house. It's never chipped paint either, though the pineapple house had metal and it chipped paint.

If you buy a squidward house, though, I don't know if they changed the way they make it. If just make sure that if there are pineapple houses, they are hollow in the top. Penn Plax did say they changed their manufacturing. Now it's just that we have to wait for stores to sell the older decorations and replace them with the new ones.